Europe Still Discussing Sanctions On Iran’s Guards

Rottgen, a member of the Christian Democratic Union and parliamentarian, has been at loggerheads with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, since Baerbock announced October 31 that the European Union was considering sanctioning the Guards (IRGC).

In October Rottgen charged in the federal parliament that “Germany was doing too little” in following a “policy of minimal pressure” over Iran that abandoned “protestors.” Baerbock responded by saying “we are not letting up…and would try to get more sanctions packages on the way.”

Rottgen this week returned to the attack, dismissing what he said was the German foreign office’s argument that a ‘terrorism’ listing required “investigations or a judgement on terrorist offenses in a member state of the EU.” Rottgen was quoted on ProSieben television that a designation could equally be based on a “judgement against the Revolutionary Guards for terrorism by an American federal court.” He said the German public was being “deceived.”

In his tweet Friday Rottgen wrote that designating the IRGC would be “against the mullah regime” and was overdue: “You have to decide now. Either you are for the revolution of freedom or you are for the regime.”

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The politics of sanctions

The EU earlier in December designated 20 people and Iran’s state media over alleged human rights abuses, including IRGC commanders, mainly in the Kurdish and Baluchi areas where violence and deaths have been concentrated in current unrest. But neither the EU nor Germany, as yet anyway, have sanctioned the IRGC as a whole. Neither, apparently, has the United Kingdom, despite claims to the contrary by James Cleverly, the foreign secretary.

The United States in 2019 put the IRGC on its list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ as part of the ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions first levied when Washington in 2018 left the 2105 Iran nuclear deal. The IRGC remains the only case of part of a sovereign state’s armed forces being listed as a ‘foreign terrorist organization.’

The EU began designating groups as ‘terrorist’ following the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, although the process has been criticized by civil liberty groups as being extra-judicial and politically motivated. The latest list of 21 has seven Palestinian groups, including Hamas, as well the Lebanese Shia party Hezbollah, the Kurdistan Workers Party, and the Tamil Liberation Tigers. It also includes the Iranian intelligence ministry’s internal security directorate.

Bikers and hit squads

While such listings have been questioned as “emotionally charged,” ineffective or counter-productive, some Iranian opposition groups and US hawks have long made a cause celebre of listing the IRGC. Recent media reports in both Europe and Israel – one of a German-Iranian biker directing ‘hit squads’ from Tehran – have help pump up their calls.

One German TV station has cited “security sources” detecting an IRGC hand in plots to attack Jews. The Jerusalem Post December 18, under a picture of Iranian Guards, bemoaned Germany exporting $1.2 billion in goods to Iran from January to October 2022 despite a “violent crackdown on protestors who are seeking the end of the theocratic state [in Iran].”

Despite bilateral trade close to €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) in 2021, Berlin this month suspended export credit guarantees to Germany companies who had been trading with Iran despite the threat of punitive US actions under ‘maximum pressure.’ The German government claimed exceptions might be made on “compelling” humanitarian grounds.

In a tweet Friday, Cleverly highlighted UK sanctions on 47 Iranians, including Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commanders, since the September 16 death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini after arrest by Tehran ‘morality police,’ and Iran’s removal from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. The UK would “continue to sanction the IRGC in its entirety,” Cleverly added.

The British foreign office tweeted December 27 a clip of Cleverly listing British sanctions against Iran including “the IRGC in its entirety.” Cleverly December 13 said in parliament: “We already sanction the IRGC in its entirety.”

Unconvinced by Cleverly’s assurances, opponents of a soft policy toward the Islamic Republic have demanded action. Kasra Aarabi, of the Tony Blair Institute, this week said the IRGC was “no different from the likes of Isis [Daesh, the Islamic State group] or al-Qaeda.”

When the United States in 2019 added the IRGC to its list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ as part of its ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions against Iran, it specifically cited the Corps “in its entirety.”

In Britain’s House of Lords October, Lord Palmer, vice-President of the Jewish Leadership Council, linked the IRGC to the “summer’s attempted murder of Sir Salman Rushdie, last year’s attempted kidnapping of…[activist] Masih Alinejad and numerous foiled plots…” The Rushdie case and the attempted kidnapping of Alinejad reported by US law enforcement, are both live legal cases with no link to the IRGC proven in court.

Various flight trackers confirmed their whereabouts at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport during the week until Iranian aviation authorities confirmed the purchase of wide-bodied, long-range four-engine airliners on Wednesday. 

Hassan Khoshkhou, the spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO), said that the Airbus A340s are "made in France" and had arrived in the country "in recent days". He stopped short of providing further details on how the airliners were procured and who facilitated the purchase. 

The four A340-300 units – namely MSN 115, 180, 270, and 331 – were formerly operated by Turkish Airlines before their retirement in March and April 2019. The planes were bought by a company from Hong Kong -- AVRO Global – and were later transferred and stored at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg until December. For the past few years, the planes have simply been parked at Johannesburg Airport, and were registered in Guernsey. There was not much sign of activity until recently, when the planes were re-registered in Burkina Faso with new registration codes — XT-AKA, XT-AKB, XT-AKK and XT-ALM. 

The planes started their journeys out of South Africa apparently headed for Uzbekistan but ended up in Iran. The A340s were all produced between 1996 and 2000, so they are 22-26 years old, as are most of the Islamic Republic’s dilapidated passenger fleet, because Iran is not allowed to buy any aircraft due to the US sanctions, which have prohibited companies from selling planes that include US-made parts. 

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This obviously presents a major challenge for Iran Air and Mahan Air, the country’s two largest airlines, which operate outdated fleets, as they can only get planes secondhand. Even the planes they get secondhand are largely acquired illegitimately through clandestine transactions to circumvent the sanctions. Rumor has it that these four Airbus A340s were purchased by Mahan Air, which already flies several Airbus A340s, most of which used to fly for Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic back in the day. 

In September, an official of Iran’s air travel services said that the reason behind a lack of plane tickets and high prices are that more than half of the country’s aircraft are grounded. "Most of the planes owned by the airlines are grounded because they need parts and it is impossible to provide them due to the sanctions," he said. He added that only about 120 to 130 airplanes out of about 340 are operational.

Alireza Barkhor, the deputy chairman of the Association of Iranian Airlines, also said last year that more than 50 percent of passenger planes are not working due to lack of spare parts, particularly engines.

Iran has suffered from shortages of civilian airliners since the 1990s and used a variety of ways to lease older planes or buy spare parts through intermediaries, but the technical state of its fleet has been deteriorating.

The 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) suspended sanctions on purchases of Western aircraft and Iran began talks to buy new planes from Boeing and Airbus. A few Airbus planes were delivered but the Trump administration never approved the sale of US planes until Washington withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018.

Back in January, there was “no alternative to dialogue,” tweeted German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in Washington. “Political decisions are needed now,” wrote Enrique Mora, the senior European Union official chairing the talks in Vienna aimed at restoring the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian agreed the talks were at a point where “we have to make a political decision.” Brett McGurk, a leading US security official, saw a “culmination point…pretty soon.”

But whatever political decisions were – or weren’t – taken, neither the Vienna process, paused in March, nor subsequent indirect US-Iran meetings were enough to bridge gaps, despite continued Iran-US message exchanges until at least September. While Iran reportedly dropped a condition that its Revolutionary Guards be removed from a US list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’ it continued to insist on ‘guarantees’ to cushion its economy and nuclear program from the US again leaving the JCPOA.

The Biden administration continued to apply ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, in November sanctioning 13 companies from mainland China, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, over alleged involvement in selling Iranian petrochemicals in East Asia. Tehran continued expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits, employing more advanced centrifuges to expand its stockpiles of uranium enriched up to 60 percent.

While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported regularly on Iran’s program, its access remained at a lower level than under the JCPOA. Tehran enforced a law passed by parliament in December 2020 after scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed, so reducing agency monitoring roughly to that required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

October: Involving the Security Council

The JCPOA reached the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in October as France, the United Kingdom and the US argued Iran and Russia were violating UNSC Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA in 2015. The three argued that Russia’s use of Iranian military drones violated a clause restricting Iran trading some categories of weapons – an argument Tehran rejected.

This was a shift in the French and UK positions, bring them closer to the US than when in 2021 the E3 – France, Germany and the UK – rejected, on the grounds Washington had left the JCPOA, an US attempt to move UN sanctions against Iran for violating the 2015 agreement.

But this widened the gap with China and Russia. Geng Shuang, Beijing’s deputy permanent representative at the UN, told the UNSC December 19 that as the “the creator of the Iranian nuclear crisis…the US should recognize its responsibility and take the lead in taking practical measures.” Geng said that pressuring Iran would “escalate conflict, undermine trust and cast a shadow over the negotiations.”

Both Russia and China voted against motions in June and November at the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Tehran over an agency enquiry into uranium traces found at undeclared sights, saying the vote would merely make matters worse.

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Talks ‘no longer our focus’

By October, US officials, including special envoy Rob Malley, said JCPOA revival was no longer their “focus.” President Joe Biden said Washington was instead “shining a spotlight” on protests in Iran – so rejecting the logic underlying the JCPOA of isolating the nuclear issue. The US, the European Union and the UK all introduced sanctions on Iranian officials over gross violation of human rights during the deadly suppression of protests and over supplying drones to Russia.

Opponents of the JCPOA have ended 2022 in high spirits, nowhere more so than in Israel where Benjamin Netanyahu - whose warning over Iran go back to 1996 when he told the US Congress Tehran was “extremely close” to a nuclear weapons - is preparing to return to power in coalition with three far-right parties.

But some analysts have argued that new thinking is needed to restore momentum for non-proliferation. In November the Washington-based Arms Control Association called for a ‘plan B’ based on “confidence-building steps by the United States and Iran to prevent further escalation...”

In the Washington Post December 1, Ellie Geranmayeh, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, rejected widening sanctions that had led Iran to escalate, arguing for “an active diplomacy track… before it is too late.” She called for “step-by-step measures” to at least freeze Iran’s nuclear program and improve IAEA access in return for “humanitarian economic relief” and eased “sanctions enforcement against third parties trading with Iran, such as those in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and China.”

But given the prevailing atmosphere amid government violence that has killed 500 protesters and supply of weapons to Russia, tensions with Iran are no longer just over the nuclear issue.

The British foreign office tweeted Tuesday a clip of Cleverly listing British sanctions against Iran where he mentions judges, morality police, individuals and companies allegedly involved in supply military drones to Moscow, as well as “the IRGC in its entirety.”

Cleverly December 13 said in parliament, according to the official record: “We already sanction the IRGC in its entirety.” But questioned immediately before this on the government’s intentions by John Spellar, a parliament member, Cleverly suggested that any IRGC designation remained in its future plans: “The UK is committed to holding Iran to account, including with more than 300 sanctions—including the sanctioning of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety.”

The UK announced December 9 the sanctioning of ten Iranian officials connected to Iran’s judicial and prison systems. “There is growing frustration that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) the branch of the Iranian army accused of peddling terror abroad, has escaped sanctions that would see it proscribed,” claimed the right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper the following day. Neither was the IRGC mentioned when the UK December 13 sanctioned Iranians purportedly involved in transferring drones to Russia.

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The United States government in 2019 included the IRGC in its list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’ a move announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the US “continuing to build its maximum pressure campaign against the Iranian regime.” The Trump administration had the previous year launched ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions as it withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

This remains the only example of Washington including part of a sovereign state’s armed forces as a ‘foreign terrorist organization,’ a category otherwise comprised of non-state groups. The US 2019 press release on the listing referred to the IRGC “in its entirety,” the same phrase used by Cleverly.

Critics of JCPOA have long argued for designating the IRGC, with Canada following the US in October. During talks aimed at restoring the 2015 agreement, which have foundered since late summer leaving Iran’s nuclear program expanding and ‘maximum pressure’ in place, there have been intermittent reports of Iran seeking to have the designation lifted.

‘Moving talks forward’

Peter Stano, the European Union foreign affairs spokesman, Monday defended the “diplomacy” and “engagement” seen in EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell meeting with Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Jordan December 20. Given the EU role coordinating multilateral nuclear talks in Vienna April 2021-March 2022 and subsequent bilateral Iran-US meetings, Stano said the meeting had been part of moving “talks about the revival of the JCPOA forward.”

In Tehran, Javad Karimi-Qudousi, a conservative member of the parliament’s national security commission, told the reformist newspaper Etemad that progress had been made on two issues stymying the talks – an enquiry by the International Atomic Energy Agency into Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear work and the status of foreign investment should the US again leave the agreement.

There has been ongoing speculation in Israel that failure to renew the JCPOA will lead to an Israeli attack. With Benjamin Netanyahu, a virulent JCPOA opponent due to form a new government including the Religious Zionism Party, Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi, the Israeli chief of staff, said Tuesday the “level of preparedness for an operation in Iran has dramatically improved.”

While he would “say no more than that,” Kohavi promised the armed forces would be “ready for the day when an order is given to act against the [Iranian] nuclear program.” Kohavi, who was Israeli Operations Director during the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza conflict when 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died, claimed Israel carried out at least one operation “against Iran” weekly somewhere across the Middle East.